Rencontres Économiques d’Aix-en-Provence 2017

In search of new forms of prosperity

7, 8 et 9 juillet 2017

Confronted to the main issues that are shaping our world, we will address the forms of a renewed prosperity which is not anymore the only result of economic growth. The risk of a global secular stagnation, the rise of inequalities, the polarization of modern societies and the growing importance of an eco-responsibility are some of the preeminent purposes that will be explored.

The event will be dedicated then to define the bases of a new prosperity in accordance with the current changing globalization and its aftermaths.

For 17 years, les Rencontres Economiques d’Aix-en-Provence have brought together more and more eminent personalities. Last year, 230 speakers and 4000 people in the public attend to this meeting on the following theme “In a World of Turmoil, What is a Nation for?”. It was covered by 110 French and foreign journalists. 37 debates were followed live on our website by 30 000 people. This event becomes, through the years, the first European open and free economic forum.

Final Declaration

12 PROPOSALS FOR A SOCIAL COMPACT OF PROGRESS

The challenges raised by the Rencontres Economiques d’Aix 2017 are strikingly urgent. Technological change and globalization have brought about unprecedented wealth, but with its long ignored suffering: democracies in jeopardy, unequal access to fundamental goods and services, work polarization, geographic imbalances, and environmental risks.

Prosperity is not merely about the search for material wealth, nor can it be summarized by the usual mentions of inclusive or sustainable growth. It relies on a humanist and sustainable social compact, balancing the necessity of technical and economic progress, on the one hand, with the preservation of freedoms, natural resources, and international openness, on the other hand. It should strive for the flourishing and realization, throughout one’s life, of individual abilities.

Despite a global economic recovery, threats jeopardize the three core pillars of the tryptic of prosperity. Institutional foundations are questioned, and nation-states’ margins of maneuver are limited; the social compact is endangered by the polarization of labour markets; and environmental risks as well as ethical interrogations about new technologies threaten our trust in progress.

Over the past five decades, technological progress and globalization supported an unprecedented economic growth, first in Western societies, then in the rest of the world. Even beyond material gains, life expectancy increased by twenty years, extreme poverty was divided by four, and women’s rights substantially increased. However, vast segments of society remained left behind by this prosperity. Half the inhabitants of the African continent remain without access to electricity. Emerging countries witness alarming levels of inequality and air pollution. In advanced economies, as labour market polarization, urban concentration, and ecological threats materialize, inequalities of opportunity breed political frustrations. Between these two worlds, migration flows stemming from insecurity, ethnic and religious conflicts, and climate change, pose a challenge to global cooperation.

Thus the opportunity given by the context of economic recovery, and the new political landscape in Europe and in France, should allow us to draft the premises of a new social compact, based upon our confidence in human progress, and guaranteeing equal opportunities throughout individual lives. It should rest upon three pillars: ensuring freedom of exchange, invention, circulation, enterprise, as a primary goal; protecting and helping those excluded from prosperity; and maintaining a spirit of experimentation and rationality. Building upon these tenets, the Cercle des Économistes chose to ask the question of shared prosperity during the 17th edition of the Rencontres Économiques d’Aix.

Emergency reactions to the crisis, which punctuated the last decade, now leave room for the invention of a modernized model of social market economy. Economists should take part in this effort, under the guidance of three principles: defending an open international economic order; building a common European home, based upon compromises which respect national sensibilities; and a structural reshuffling of the French economic, social and political institutions. Under such values of shared and humanist prosperity, the Cercle des Économistes offers 12 avenues for shared prosperity.

I. Reconnecting with a spirit of progress: aiming for mass flourishing

Event pictures

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